Have you ever found your own game in the wild??

[Jumpman Jr.]

Hey everybody.
I meant to write this topic a while ago, but it kept on slipping my mind.
When I was a kid (like most of you) I was playing video games on the NES. Eventually, I got out of video games, and my mom dumped all of my games at some place (I actually asked her where she brought them yesterday and she said "Cash Converters.")
However, I was every collectors worst enemy, because I would write my name on the cart in marker, coxing it for life.
A few months ago I went into a local pawn shop. And saw a copy of "Bart vs. the Space Mutants" for the NES. I allready have this game (since I it was one of the games I had to buy when I started collecting because I played it as a kid) but for some reason, I decided to look at it. (The games were aligned to you could see the top label)
I pulled it out, and I couldn't beleive it: "Bowins" written beside the label. Now, I know for sure that I always wrote my last name where this one was written. Also, there are very little Bowins' in Canada, let along Ottawa (My familly is the only one.)
I wonder how many times it changed hands, and how it ended up there.
Obviously, I bought it cause I thought that it should be brought home for good.
Just wondering, has anybody else found something of there own? I guess it would be hard to tell unless you wrote on your games before. But, even still, do you think its possible that any of the games you own now used to be yours as a child?
Jumpman Jr.

[Richter Belmount]

I still see the copy virtua fighter 4 i traded to game crazy ever time i go and i mean noone has bought for the past few years heh heh. ( i did the same thing with anime dvds and noone buys em) im the type to leave my junk on others peoples hands , stuff that will never sell so yeah i see old stuff of mine all the time.

[§ Gideon §]

LOL That's a heart-warming story. It almost brings a tear to my eye :(.

I moved around a lot as a kid, so no. I don't think I'll ever be picking up one of my old games. Besides, we didn't have many back then--maybe ten. On top of that, we never marked our games. So, basically there's no chance of me ever knowing.

I guess that's why I liked your story. :)

[Classicgamesdepot]

What an awesome topic....for me the answer is, no.

I never traded in a single video game and when i started collecting I used goo gone to get rid of my name from all my "original" carts. (man did that make a mess of the cart sometimes)

[CitizenWhite]

I've got a friend thats into writing, filming, and producing movies and music, he's currently working on his third, a horror musical. Anyway, we were in a local cd store one day and someone had sold them a copy of his first one (he gets professional DVDs made). So, I guess technically he was finding his own movie, although it belonged to someone else.

I've never found one of mine, although I'm not much into collecting games, or writing on them.

[AlexKidd]

A while ago when I wasn't into video games I had a tag sale and one of the things I was selling was an sms with the box and a bunch of games. An old japanese guy came and bought it and a few years later I started going to a game store that this guy owned. I was looking around there and saw a bunch of cartridges and thought they might have been mine but then I found a psycho fox in the box with my name on the manual. I bought all of my stuff back.

[Big Papa Husker]

Its never happened to me, but it has crossed my mind. The only thing that I would be able to tell was mine was my Game Genie and the code book. The Genie had big scratches on the side and the codebook had a codes that I made up for an imaginary game... Things you do when you are 6. Haha...

[Pantechnicon]

Even if I did, chances are I wouldn't know it since I never marked my games or systems in any way that would denote that they were my own.

In any case while I grew up in Santa Fe I've lived in Albuquerque - fifty miles away - for the last ten years (effective tomorrow). Some of what I originally had and lost to garage sales or whatnot could conceivably have made its way here but again I would be hard-pressed to know that.

Slightly OT, but last year I did actually manage to find and buy a book that was once mine but my clueless parents sold long ago. It's a 1948 hardcover edition of Dante's Divine Comedy with illustrations by Gustav Dore. My grandmother gave it to me as a gift in 1988 and my parents sold it (along with my Atari 2600 and RPG collection :angry: ) at a garage sale shortly after I left home. I found the Comedy at an antiquarian bookstore here in Albq and immediately knew it was mine because of some characteristic wear marks. Paid through the nose to get it back but it was totally worth it :D

[AFGiant]

Hehe, I've told my parents that when I graduate, they WILL NOT throw out or sell any of my stuff. They agreed, hehe, and wern't planning on it anyway.

As some people may (but probably don't) remember, my parents owned a video store for 18 years (until this February). Therefore, any game I find that has our Super Video stickers and labels on it would have technically been mine at one point. Recently my friend was cleaning his room and he came across a bag of about 15 NES games in his closet. He gave them to me (and a Power Pad he had had once, too) and it turns out all of them had been from my store. It was nice owning a piece of my old store back. So far, that's been it though. I might come across some more in the future.

[Cmosfm]

When I was young, I sold a boxed copy of Street Cop to a woman at the the flea market who bought and sold games, still does. Anyways, I checked with her about 2 years ago, and my boxed Street Cop was still there, cause no one wanted that stupid game, but the box was beat as shit.

Bought it anyways, oh well. :D

[Queen Of The Felines]

It wasn't a video game, but I used to have this small Disney desk-like thing that lit up when it was plugged in. It came with a bunch of paper with characters and items on them and you were supposed to use the light and tracing paper to make your own scenes and stuff. I was about eight when I had it and Mom sold it in a garage sale a few years later.

About twenty years afterwards I was at a toy show and I saw the same item, box and all, sitting on a table. I freaked out, saying "Oh I used to have one of these!" and opened it up to check it out. The sheets that were inside had the doodles I had made on them so I KNEW it was mine. :eek 2:

I bought it and it's back in the closet at my parents' house. Don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I just had to get it. LOL

Kristine

[Uzi 9mm]

Well, one time one of my friends' little brother found my old copy of Ghostbusters for the NES, and didn't know until he found my last name on the back, in my handwriting.

[ClubNinja]

About six years ago, I traded in my original complete copy of Virtua Fighter 2 for the Genesis at a local Funcoland. I had VF2 for the Saturn, so I figured I didn't need it anymore. Two years later, at a Gamestop on the other side of the state, I found a complete VF2 for the Genesis - this was great since I had been wanting to pick it up again for a while at that point. So, I pull it off the shelf and start checking it out. All the odd folds in the manual seemed awfully familiar. Then, I found the goofy stick figure guy that was drawn in there for no good reason by a buddy of mine. I obviously bought the game and still have it. Baby's come home!

[Rugal]

I bought Kirby Dreamland 3 SNES complete from an old vendor......traded it on TGN, the new owner then gave it to his friend and he ended up trading it back to me. :D

[drwily008]

I used to rent Dragon Warrior 2 over & over again years after the Nintendo's popularity ran out. It was also rented by another guy "Red". We both rented it but NEVER erased each others games. I finally beat it and started on some SNES stuff I owned.

Years later it was gone and I had long forgotten. I still wanted a copy of that game. I finally found one my junior year of High School at a flea market for $10....it was the same one! It still had my original save "Blade" save ( LOL hey I was young!) and the other guys "Red" save.

Another kid in my computer class in High School also played RPG's and I was telling him about it AND it turned out HE was "Red"!! Go figure he had red hair.

I thought that was great, he also remembered the cartridge with the "Blade" save! Still had Giant Eagle rental stickers too..even though I took those off.

[Ed Oscuro]

I was looking around there and saw a bunch of cartridges and thought they might have been mine but then I found a psycho fox in the box with my name on the manual. I bought all of my stuff back.
What did it cost you in the end?

As for myself...nope, never, but I did see a boxed CyClones at a local Goodwill recently. Possibly a copy that'd been in a software bin at the local Wallmart years back, where I'd gotten my copy. That's just not a game you see often.

[PDorr3]

I used to rent Dragon Warrior 2 over & over again years after the Nintendo's popularity ran out. It was also rented by another guy "Red". We both rented it but NEVER erased each others games. I finally beat it and started on some SNES stuff I owned.

Years later it was gone and I had long forgotten. I still wanted a copy of that game. I finally found one my junior year of High School at a flea market for $10....it was the same one! It still had my original save "Blade" save ( LOL hey I was young!) and the other guys "Red" save.

Another kid in my computer class in High School also played RPG's and I was telling him about it AND it turned out HE was "Red"!! Go figure he had red hair.

I thought that was great, he also remembered the cartridge with the "Blade" save! Still had Giant Eagle rental stickers too..even though I took those off.

Wow this is now my new favorite topic, and this story is awsome! LOL who would have known that that Red guy was someone in yuour class the whole time.

I dont have any stories because I rarely traded in games and never wrote on them, but I would love to hear more stories.

[BrokenFlight]

This has nothing to do with video games but I saw my dad's old car driving around a few times after he sold it. Does that count? :)

[Xantan the Foul]

I never wrote my name on my games, but that is a pretty cool story :)

[Dr. Morbis]

Cool thread. I've never traded in a single game in my life, so I've never experienced finding my own game. However, when I was 12 a "friend" stole my Adventure Island NES cart, which has my name written on the back. So if anyone out there ever finds an Adventure Island with "Basil" written on the back, PM me STAT! It's my only lost game. I yearn for it's return LOL

[Dangerboy]

I actually had this happen except it wasn't so much my game....so much as the same game passed through my hands four times.

When i worked at High Score (the local family game place that is sadly closing down), I used to process all the retail-to-rental conversions if I was on morning shift. I just happened to be there when Crash Bandicoot 1 came in. I converted it over (you could tell mine because I unbent the staples to pull the manual out, everyone else just pulled).

Year later, we pulled that game from rental and I did the conversion back for it and tossed it into the sell bin.

4 years later, after moving out of state, coming back home and working for a different store, one of my first ever transactions was someone trading in that exact game to me, to which of course I had to process it and realized it was the same one (my hand writing is REALLY recoginzable).

Of course, I eventually sold the game to someone.

Same game, in and out, two different stores, four years apart. Go figure. :)

The other one isn't really 'mine' per se, but I thought this was kinda of cool.

When I transferred to my Chicago EB from Maryland, I thought nothing of the packing/warehouse aspect of it. I mean, we have 2,000+ stores, what's the odds of something coming back to me? Well sure as poop, In 4 years later I pull a Everquest Expansion pack out of a shipment box, notice it still has the price tag, and see my old store number on it, with my little price gun habit printed right on there (I used to add the +plus tax icon just because I hated people who asked, "With Tax." I annoyed my boss with that :) ).

For the 87 cents it cost me, I bought and kept it as a trinket. Good ol White Marsh EB was never the same...

Fun topic!

[stonecutter]

Great topic, great stories. Mine is not nearly as good but this is as close as it gets. I had given a bunch of NES stuff to my wifes sister for her kids, some nice games too, and famicom LOst levels SMB, convertors etc, then a few yrs later I started to collect and I was able to get it all back since they still had it. I even gave my niece some money since it was hers then and she is a good kid, kept in as good as shape. Meh I guess I just payed a storage fee lol

[shopkins]

My story isn't as heartwarming, but:

I lent my brother and his wife some Genesis stuff once and accidentally put a couple of 32X games, including my Afterburner III, in the lot. I never saw the Genesis stuff again, and my brother and his wife had a messy divorce. The kind where she just left one day and took what she wanted of his stuff.

About four years later I'm at the local fleamarket and I see her, and some familiar looking stuff spread on a table, including my Afterburner III. It wasn't worth arguing over so I just bought it. I think she gave me a, "I know this is yours" price, because she sold it to me for $1.

I didn't even know that I'd let my brother have it with that Genesis stuff, and had searched my room in vain for it several times.

[Six Switch]

this is a very cool thread,fun to read.i have only sold one game in my life so i am pretty sure i will never find something that use to be mine,but i like the idea of it.

[ShinobiMan]

My original nintendo was stolen when I was a kid, along with all of my games. The house was robbed.

We later found some of our old games in a pawn shop. A couple of months later. We were upset to say the least, but by this time we had moved onto the Genesis and found little need to pout.

I never ran into my old carts again, but if I did today, you'd bet I'd snatch those fellas up quicker than it takes a 5 year old to beat Gun Bird on the Sega Saturn.

[mills]

Awesome thread, the story about DW2 almost made me cry. If anyone finds any NES or SNES carts with the name "Caffelle", "Sumner" or the adress "67 Frankton Ave" on them, those were mine!