"I didn't know that game was in there!" Times when you scored something nice by accident.

[BetaWolf]

Ever been out hunting, bought a game or system, and have something unexpected in a disc tray?

I've been working on my GameCube collection. I went out one day targeting Mario sports titles. Found a Pokemon XD themed GameCube for $25. That seemed like a decent price, I could use a backup GameCube! Lo and behold, Super Mario Strikers was in the tray. While I wasn't looking, the salesperson put in a memory card that was apparently part of the purchase. That memory card had save files for Super Mario Strikers, Mario Superstar Baseball, and Mario Power Tennis. It's pretty rare that I'm handed something on a silver platter like that.

[Daria]

I bought an NES at a garage sale with a 5-screw zelda inside. But I have a friend who bought a 3DO from a shop with a copy of Lucienne's Quest in the disk tray.

[Niku-Sama]

I got a complete game boy set once with a copy of Tetris in it

[goldenband]

The Dreamcast my wife gave me back in 2007, bought off Ebay AFAIK, came with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on the spindle. I can't imagine that was intentional on the seller's part.

[Steve W]

My first Sega CD drive I bought at a street sale couldn't eject the disc (it was a model 1), I opened it up and Final Fight CD was in the drive. Nice! Many years later I bought a bare untested TurboDuo for $40 and turns out Dungeon Explorer II was in it!

[Emperor Megas]

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[BetaWolf]

My first Sega CD drive I bought at a street sale couldn't eject the disc (it was a model 1), I opened it up and Final Fight CD was in the drive. Nice! Many years later I bought a bare untested TurboDuo for $40 and turns out Dungeon Explorer II was in it!

Similar thing happened to me. I was browsing the Sega CD selection at a Play N Trade (now closed), and came across Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (a crappy car action game that takes place on top of prerendered stages, not a port of the arcade beat-em-up by Capcom). I opened the case, and Final Fight CD was in there. I told the clerk, and they came up with a price of only a few dollars. When I took it home, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs was in there, behind Final Fight CD. Whoops.

Conversely, I also bought a Dreamcast game I was really looking forward to playing. I didn't check what was inside, so when I took it home, there was just a PSX demo disc. ARGH!

[Damaramu]

Picked up a Japanese copy of Virtua Fighter 3 TB for $5 at Half Price Books. When I got home I discovered a Guilty Gear X disc hidden behind the instruction booklet.

[XYXZYZ]

I ordered a box of goodies from Japan, one of said goodies was Valis IV for the PC Engine. The jewel case contained a sheet of secret codes for the game written in Japanese on Urusei Yatsura stationary. Not like a free game in a console, but I thought it was neat.

KLOV has a similar thread about people finding the cashbox full of money when they buy arcade machines. It's rare, but it happens.

[celerystalker]

I bought my brother a Dreamcast that had a BMX game in it... Matt Hoffman, I think. I have found a few things inside of arcade cabinets I've bought. Time Soldiers had the manuals for the kit and for the Dynamo cabinet in it. My Neo Geo had alighter and a crescent wrench in it along with 50 cents.

[MachineGex]

I have told this story before, but it's been awhile.

While game hunting at the local flea market, I ran across a lady selling a box of loose NES games. There were about 100 loose games. She was only asking $100. As I was looking over the titles, she told me her son really wanted to buy two PS2 games and he needed $80. I decided for that much, why not. After I got home....I quickly took out 10 or so games that I knew I needed and put the rest in my office(not really going thru it too well).

A few months later a friend wanted to borrow Zelda. I hate lending games out, they never come back....but remembered seeing a label-less Zelda in the flea market box. I pulled out the game and I was blown away. It wasn't Zelda, it was a Gold NWC! I had just read about the cart online and knew exactly what it was. Needless to say, my friend didn't get that cart as a loaner. In the end, it wasn't too bad.... 80 cents for a Gold NWC!!!

[Tanooki]

When I got pinbot earlier this year I was surprised to find random stuff inside the body of it that either was factory parts or one of the few previous home owners had and forgot about considering the dust involved. I found a few batteries, a small fold over folder, and a key fob. The folder had a full selection of a few replacement lights of each possible kind, a few jacks, various fuses, and other bits. The fob was something I think operators or vendors got but it's blue and says Pinbot on it with the table # too (make not serial.) It was a happy surprise. Hung up the fob and I've used a couple of the replacement bulbs in the table playfield soon after getting it which fixed up the duds and has since.

[The 1 2 P]

I bought a DS copy of Final Fantasy III at a thrift store and inside, along with FFIII, was a copy of New Super Mario Bros, a Tales game and a Final Fantasy GBA game. Total was $4.

[calgon]

Wow @ the NWC cart and all these other stories!

[Steve W]

Conversely, I also bought a Dreamcast game I was really looking forward to playing. I didn't check what was inside, so when I took it home, there was just a PSX demo disc. ARGH!

Oh yeah, I've been there too. I've actually bought games at a store like Movie Trading Company where I get it home, take off the shrinkwrap and open up the case, and find there's either no disc inside (Who Shot Johnny Rock? for the Sega CD), or I've bought a Japanese import Dreamcast game (Blue Stinger? Or Air Force Delta? I don't remember anymore), got it home and set it on a shelf. Didn't check it until a year or more later, and found a plain old US version of Hydro Thunder inside.

Thrift stores are usually bad for me, I've gotten burned a lot. Bought a heavily scotch-taped copy of Skullmonkeys for the PS1, got it home and opened it, and there's no disc. I've found AOL CD-ROMs inside game cases, or old '80s music compilations (that actually happened twice to me). I'll always slice open the CD case at the checkstand before plopping down my money nowadays, on the few chances I go thrift shopping anymore and the even fewer chances I actually find something that the resellers haven't gotten to yet.

[The 1 2 P]

I'll always slice open the CD case at the checkstand before plopping down my money nowadays, on the few chances I go thrift shopping anymore and the even fewer chances I actually find something that the resellers haven't gotten to yet.

Same here and it's pretty much a must. Some Goodwill's use to heavily tape close games that were Target returns but I'd always make them open them up first and would usually find either a heavily scratched disc or one's with rings burned into the disc which render them completely unplayable. And I don't stop there...

The latest scam people are doing is buying the new Xbox One controllers with the 3.5 mm headphone jack from Target, taking them out, putting their old non 3.5 mm headphone jack controller back in the box and returning it to Target for a full refund. Guess where all those returns have ended up? Yup, different Goodwill's. The controller's are usually only priced between $10-$25 but I have enough of them that I'm not buying them unless they are the new ones. And I check every single time because they are in the new controller boxes indicating the headphone jack but it's always the older controllers. Better to be safe than sorry.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

I got Golden Axe Warrior for Master System CIB for 16 bucks back in 2009. I didn't know how much it was worth, I knew it was more than 16 bucks but I thought it might be worth 30 or so. Come to find out it was worth about 80 back then and maybe worth 130 now.

[ave1]

One day at a thrift store I opened up the cd case for what I thought was the Dreamcast game, "Expendable", and the disc inside was "Dynamite Cop" instead. Oh happy day!

[Tokimemofan]

Oh yes the PS2 tool I bought, had a dvd emulator kit in it. That had protos of Twisted Metal Harbor City and Warhawk.

[Nesmaster]

The last two were Super Mario Sunshine in the tray of a Gamecube at Goodwill for $20, and at Value Village, GBA SP with A Link to the Past in it for $4.