AFGiant
03-20-2005, 11:16 PM
Yep, this is probably the best videogame score I'll ever make. But first, a little background.
For 18 years my parents have owned an independent video store in Albany, New York. It has been repeatedly ranked best video store in the capitol district, and a year or two ago it was ranked Second Best Independant Video Retailer in the nation (!!!). Yeah, we were a big store. It was called Super Video. One of the reasons we ranked so well is that because within a five mile radius of our store, there were 13 Hollywood and Blockbuster videos. For 18 years our store held its own. Last fall, a Hollywood video opened up DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM US, AND (get this) CHARGED 99 CENT RENTALS. Hm, with a video market this saturated, they had one intention: drive us out of business. But, since our store had a much better variety (we had about 40,000 pieces of inventory: 12,000 DVDs, 18,000 VHS, 1,000 audio books, 5,000 games, and 4,000 adult movies) and great customer service, Hollywood didn't make as big of a dent as they liked. In actuality, we were hurting them more than they were hurting us. So, to make this brief (its getting long, sorry), they offered to buy us out. My dad has been on top of this industry so long, and he recognized the changing market (online rentals, movies on demand, etc.) and Hollywood's offer was good enough that he accepted. Hollywood Video did not want our inventory, so he sold that to a guy in North Carolina who works in video stores. This guy took all of the inventory, but there was quite a bit of stuff not in the inventory. Also, before the deal was final, we started to sell off some of our games. This is where I came in.
In January, I priced up all of our PSX games for sale. We had something like 600 of them. I personally bought many good and rare ones (Including a complete Fox Hunt, R8). I also bought up any games that were for sale for $2 or under (a lot of sports games). Our store had to be closed out by February 15th, so I began to grab any stuff not in our inventory. I asked to get anything game related, and that wasn't a problem. Now I didn't get all this stuff sorted through until recently, so here is most of my final score:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/SuperVideoHaul053.jpg
(if that doesn't work here is a direct link: http://photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/?action=view¤t=SuperVideoHaul053.jpg
The best part: I only paid about $125 for some psx and N64 games. The vast majority was for free. So, now in my house, are 5 PS2s, 4 gamecubes, 2 Xboxes, 2 Dreamcasts, and 2 N64s, among other things. I took individual pics of everything here, and here is the link to the photobucket gallery for closer inspection of the stuff:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/
My personal favorite pics are the one of the Sega Saturn that I found neglected in a box in the back room and cleaned up with all the saturn games, the picture of the Lunar stuff (thanks to sharc for the jewl case!), and the picture of the ps2 systems.
And that is my story, and my find of almost 200 (mostly good) games, countless strategy guides, manuals, boxes, and just game stuff. Farewell, Super Video, because for me, there's never been life without you.
For 18 years my parents have owned an independent video store in Albany, New York. It has been repeatedly ranked best video store in the capitol district, and a year or two ago it was ranked Second Best Independant Video Retailer in the nation (!!!). Yeah, we were a big store. It was called Super Video. One of the reasons we ranked so well is that because within a five mile radius of our store, there were 13 Hollywood and Blockbuster videos. For 18 years our store held its own. Last fall, a Hollywood video opened up DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM US, AND (get this) CHARGED 99 CENT RENTALS. Hm, with a video market this saturated, they had one intention: drive us out of business. But, since our store had a much better variety (we had about 40,000 pieces of inventory: 12,000 DVDs, 18,000 VHS, 1,000 audio books, 5,000 games, and 4,000 adult movies) and great customer service, Hollywood didn't make as big of a dent as they liked. In actuality, we were hurting them more than they were hurting us. So, to make this brief (its getting long, sorry), they offered to buy us out. My dad has been on top of this industry so long, and he recognized the changing market (online rentals, movies on demand, etc.) and Hollywood's offer was good enough that he accepted. Hollywood Video did not want our inventory, so he sold that to a guy in North Carolina who works in video stores. This guy took all of the inventory, but there was quite a bit of stuff not in the inventory. Also, before the deal was final, we started to sell off some of our games. This is where I came in.
In January, I priced up all of our PSX games for sale. We had something like 600 of them. I personally bought many good and rare ones (Including a complete Fox Hunt, R8). I also bought up any games that were for sale for $2 or under (a lot of sports games). Our store had to be closed out by February 15th, so I began to grab any stuff not in our inventory. I asked to get anything game related, and that wasn't a problem. Now I didn't get all this stuff sorted through until recently, so here is most of my final score:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/SuperVideoHaul053.jpg
(if that doesn't work here is a direct link: http://photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/?action=view¤t=SuperVideoHaul053.jpg
The best part: I only paid about $125 for some psx and N64 games. The vast majority was for free. So, now in my house, are 5 PS2s, 4 gamecubes, 2 Xboxes, 2 Dreamcasts, and 2 N64s, among other things. I took individual pics of everything here, and here is the link to the photobucket gallery for closer inspection of the stuff:
http://photobucket.com/albums/v654/AFGiant/SV/
My personal favorite pics are the one of the Sega Saturn that I found neglected in a box in the back room and cleaned up with all the saturn games, the picture of the Lunar stuff (thanks to sharc for the jewl case!), and the picture of the ps2 systems.
And that is my story, and my find of almost 200 (mostly good) games, countless strategy guides, manuals, boxes, and just game stuff. Farewell, Super Video, because for me, there's never been life without you.