My first R10.....

[Goblin]

I think it has been a long time since I've heard praise to Bira Bira. But today he helped me score my first R10.

Anyway I was passing a yard sale today and happen to get the urge to stop. I usually can't be bothered but today was different, something told me to check it out. I scan the yard and saw nothing of interest. I head towards the back of the yard and on a table with old 8mm cameras, and 70's vintage battery chargers was something resembling an Intellivision. I take a closer look and it says "General Instruments" and "Playcable" on it. Now inside my head the bells started going off...Jackpot! I quickly paid for item and left. I get into my car and hand my wife this dirty box and say "We're done."

Now when I found it I realized it was unique and expected it to be somewhat rare, but wasn't expecting it to be a 10. Unfortunately I didn't have a guide in my car, so I needed to wait an hour until I could get home. They whole time I'm doing the happy dance in my head.

http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/game.cmf?gameid=1827

Now for all you Intellivision experts: How many of these things are out there? I haven't been able to find any estimates on price, and our guide only gives the mouthwatering "$$$".

Thanks Bira Bira.

[TEND]

Wow that is awesome, congratulations on the find!

[jajaja]

Nice find :) How much did you pay for it?

[evil_genius]

Nice frickin find. Why can't I find good stuff like that at yard sales? All I ever get is loose Sega Genesis and NES cartridges.

Sorry but I don't know a thing about that machine. I wish I could help you out, I'm sure someone around here knows about it. Now for me to beg the question, how much did you steal that for? I'm gonna go out on a limb and make a guess here. $10, no more than $20. You're a sly, sly dog. But hey, anyone here would have done the same thing, so I'm not talking down on that.

[fergojisan]

BWAHAHAHAHA!! Bira Bira. I haven't heard that in a loooooong time. I'm assuming you were on the RGVC newsgroup way back when? What was/is your nick over there?

Nice find BTW. :-P

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Nice find!

[intvsama]

Dude... I absolutely hate you. 8*) I've been collecting Intellivision for over 10 years and haven't seen a Playcable in real life, let alone had the opportunity to buy one. Definately a nice find.

As far as price... I think there was one on eBay a while back... fetched... $100-$200, IIRC. My memory's a little fuzzy tho'. Could have certainly been more. There are quite a number of tenacious Intellivision collectors on eBay snapping up anything and everything no matter what the price. I'm not one of them. 8*)

[qbertandernie]

pics?

[Buyatari]

I'd expect something like that to get minimum of $500 these days

[Videogamerdaryll]

Wow that is awesome, congratulations on the find!


Ditto..


I'd love to see what it looks like...

[kainemaxwell]

Congrats, got a pic?

[digitalpress]

Nice job! That is truly a once in a lifetime find.

[Goblin]

Wow, thanks for the kind words and showing so much interest in this. I cleaned it up, plugged it in, and guess what? It still works! Well it works in as much as it shows the menu screen:
http://home.comcast.net/~gamesfortrade/playcable/screen_1.JPG

The unit itself looks great too, once I cleaned off the grime:
http://home.comcast.net/~gamesfortrade/playcable/Unit_1.JPG

I haven't decided what to do with it yet. I'd love to say I'll keep it, but then again I'm not sure. This afternoon as I was searching for information in the forums, I took the opportunity to re-read some of the "what would you do..." posts that come up every so often. I never realistically thought I would be in the position where I would need to decide.

I'll figure out the next step later, right now I'm on cloud 9. I'm just excited to have found something this cool and don't want the feeling to go away.

This is actually the second huge find for me this year. The first was the famicom and almost 400 FDS disks a few months back, now this. I've had my best finds ever when I'm not even looking.

[omnedon]

Good Freaking God. X_x

*bows*

I haven't seen one of those since back in the day!!!

[mcgrail0007@netzero.net]

Who knows what it would bring on eBay. I would give you $200 for it right now but to be honest with you the sky could be the limit on eBay.

[Tbowl]

Heh, I would give much more for it than 200 :0

Also wondering if anyone did research and find if it ever had original packaging?

[miaandjohnrule]

@_@ Damn! Congrats on the find. I've got to find me one of those. :)

[Sothy]

you should make it into a big ass necklace and wear it at CGE.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Man, that's great! I found a R10 in the wild before but it was a NES Xenophobe proto, nothing on that calibre, that's probably worth a ton nowadays. What ever you do with it think about it first and don't make a quick decision. :D

[Jumpman Jr.]

Crazy.
I don't even know if I would be able to pick one of those out becuase I have no idea what it looks like. (well, now I do)
Congrats on the find man! X_x

[jajaja]

One thing I've been wondering, why on earth did they put wood on consoles before? Its just as crazy as putting wood on cars hehe.

[SlayerOfFurbies]

great find >;))

well the Xbox 360 will have a wood grained skin

[Goblin]

Also wondering if anyone did research and find if it ever had original packaging?
Yes there is original packaging, a box at least. An old post from DP, stated he had one boxed in the CGE museum.


Nice find :) How much did you pay for it?
I'll let you know later, as everyone already hates me for this.
:D


BWAHAHAHAHA!! Bira Bira. I haven't heard that in a loooooong time. I'm assuming you were on the RGVC newsgroup way back when? What was/is your nick over there?
It seemed to be the right time to reference Bira Bira.
I never actually posted to RGVC, but I started collecting in 1997 and lurked there for a long time before I found this and other boards.


As far as price... I think there was one on eBay a while back... fetched... $100-$200, IIRC. My memory's a little fuzzy tho'. Could have certainly been more. There are quite a number of tenacious Intellivision collectors on eBay snapping up anything and everything no matter what the price.

Heh, I would give much more for it than 200 :0

I'd expect something like that to get minimum of $500 these days

The only prices I could find were in the google usenet archives and were back somewhere in the '99-'02 time frame. A number of posts there refered to auctions that sometime prior to the close were $350, and $300. What this could bring today, I have no idea. If I sell it, then it needs to be on ebay so that I can get maximum exposure. Especially since there is no real established price for this item.


Man, that's great! I found a R10 in the wild before but it was a NES Xenophobe proto, nothing on that calibre, that's probably worth a ton nowadays. What ever you do with it think about it first and don't make a quick decision. :D

Figure I'll think about it for about a week, maybe contact a few experts (ie other respected collectors) and see what they advise. Right now I'm pondering my options. I'll post my intentions here, when I finally decide.



I honestly don't expect to keep it, I just don't know how I want to approach passing it on. Normally I would not bother with ebay prefering to keep sales in trade within the forums. But do to the overwhelming interest, I would be remiss if I didn't auction this and shoot for the moon.

The other option I am toying with is trying to hold onto this and see if I can trade it for something big. Maybe finally trying to get a pinball machine. I just have no idea right now. As I said last night, I am still on the top of a cloud with this.

[loporjai2003]

I think it has been a long time since I've heard praise to Bira Bira. But today he helped me score my first R10.
...
Thanks Bira Bira.

Oh man !! Bira Bira .. anyone got pics of Bira Bira ?
I remember a site for it ... all pray to Bira Bira for good finds

Side note: I remember vaguely, Bira Bira was I think
a Bora Bora statue ...

[wberdan]

congratulations x10 !

thats great news- a great score!



willie

[zerohero]

Awsome find man, makes me wanna stop at the next sale I see on the road again :)

[DogP]

That's a cool find... I have no knowledge of, or interest in rare Intellivision stuff, as I didn't grow up with one, so I only play it now for the fun games, but any time a rare thing like this is found, I'm glad... just think if you wouldn't have bought it... unless there are any other video game collectors doing the garage sales that weekend, I'm sure nobody would have bought it (since who wants that stuff anymore, unless they're selling a whole system to go with it), and it would have gone in the trash the next day :( .

And my guess on price, probably $.25... no more than $.50. Congrats on the nice find!

DogP

[AFGiant]

I like to see R10s found. This topic makes me happy.

[Austin]

Amazing find! Congratulations!

[qbertandernie]

whats the deal with not telling the price you paid? who cares? we all know it wasnt near the market for it, so why not say?

its the differnece between everyone thinking 'wow this guy got an r10 for (insert price here)!!'

vs.

gee, i wonder what this guy got the r10 for?

its not going to affect the price you get when you sell it, if thats what you think.

[WanganRunner]

its not going to affect the price you get when you sell it, if thats what you think.

Yeah, definitely not.

It makes me happy when obscure stuff like this gets found by the community and goes to a collector to be preserved rather than getting tossed in the garbage by someone.

I've never even heard of this thing before, and if you hadn't found it and made this post, I'd still never had heard of it. I had no idea Intellivision had a modem.

To be perfectly honest, I'd imagine that if you put that up on eBay with a $1000 Buy-It-Now, you might get a bite. Maybe not on the first auction run, maybe not on the second, but sooner or later, I think someone would pay $1k for it. It'd help to link to internet resources that talk about it.

There's no shortage of well-heeled collectors these days.

[Slate]

Figure I'll think about it for about a week, maybe contact a few experts (ie other respected collectors) and see what they advise. Right now I'm pondering my options. I'll post my intentions here, when I finally decide.

I honestly don't expect to keep it, I just don't know how I want to approach passing it on. Normally I would not bother with ebay prefering to keep sales in trade within the forums. But do to the overwhelming interest, I would be remiss if I didn't auction this and shoot for the moon.

The other option I am toying with is trying to hold onto this and see if I can trade it for something big. Maybe finally trying to get a pinball machine. I just have no idea right now. As I said last night, I am still on the top of a cloud with this.

I'd keep it if i were you. You might NEVER get an R10 Again unless you pay Mad $$$ for it.

[Goblin]

whats the deal with not telling the price you paid? who cares? we all know it wasnt near the market for it, so why not say?

its the differnece between everyone thinking 'wow this guy got an r10 for (insert price here)!!'

vs.

gee, i wonder what this guy got the r10 for?

its not going to affect the price you get when you sell it, if thats what you think.

You're taking this too seriously. I never said I wasn't going to tell, I just said I'd tell you later. I was curious to see what people thought. I figured I'd get reactions and then finish the story later on in the week.

I actually paid $2. Any you know what, I was slightly annoyed at that. Not that I didn't get a great deal, and its not that I'm cheap, it was just that most of the rest of the crap on the table had $1 stickers on them. This was un-priced, so I had to ask. Considering it was actually the least "useful" item on the table since the service no longer exists, it probably should have been less according to yard sale pricing rules.

My theory is that when the service was canceled, the guy probably put this thing aside waiting for it to be picked up by the cable company. After a while he probably tossed it in the garage (evidenced by grime I had to clean off). The console and games were probably in use for a while longer and then eventually sold or thrown out. The playcable was probably forgotten about until he cleaned his garage prior to the sale. Up walks this random guy who actually wants to buy this piece of random crap. He probably thinks he was the big winner.




I'd keep it if i were you. You might NEVER get an R10 Again unless you pay Mad $$$ for it.

This is exactly what keeps playing around in my head. On the other side Mad $$$ might be good coming in. I'm mulling over a few trade/buy offers now. I just don't know yet.

[birdie3]

OK.. I am a retard. What is this thing? Kinda looks like an Intellivision.

On a side note - I had a nice find today too. I found a CIB Amiga CD32 with 5 games.

[DogP]

I'd keep it if i were you. You might NEVER get an R10 Again unless you pay Mad $$$ for it.

This is exactly what keeps playing around in my head. On the other side Mad $$$ might be good coming in. I'm mulling over a few trade/buy offers now. I just don't know yet.

Unless you are actually into collecting rare stuff for the Intellivision, I'd DEFINATELY sell it... personally, I'd never keep anything just because it's rare, or called an "R10" by some book... I keep stuff that I think is cool. My rare Virtual Boy stuff I'll probably never sell (until I get out of the hobby, if ever). I've had random rare stuff pass through my hands for systems that I don't have much interest in, and it doesn't bother me at all to get rid of it, since I don't have any reason to keep it. If I kept that stuff, it wouldn't fit into the norms of my collection, and most likely would just sit in a box/case/shelf/etc and gather dust and never be seen/admired.

I personally see holy grails as being certain games/accessories/etc that you have a specific desire to own, not a holy grail of owning any "R10".

I'm not saying you should just give it away, I'd definately try to make as much money (or as good of a trade) as you can off of it... but I'd sell it and feel glad that a random stop at a garage sale made me a quick few hundred bucks.

That's just my opinion though, take it for what it's worth.

DogP

[Goblin]

UPDATE.

I figured I would share a little insight into what has been going on in my head the past week since I found the playcable unit. Sadly from the first day I knew that I wasn’t going to keep it. When I look at all my finds in the last 10 years, 3 of the top 10 involved items for the Intellivision. This was a system I really wanted to like, but never could. That’s what made this find so bitter sweet. Here I had in my hands, one of the rarest items in game collecting, and it was for a system I didn’t collect for. Now had this been a NWC cartridge or an unreleased NES prototype I think this internal debate would have gone very different. I collect for a number systems, NES, Genesis, TG-16, Atari XE, 2600, Lynx, and Jaguar, but not Intellivision.

At one point I thought I might keep it, for no other reason than I might never see another R10. The more I talked to people and re-read the other responses in this thread I realized this didn't make much sense. My collection is largely stored in my basement. I do share it with others from time to time, but not enough to make keeping this worthwhile. When not being played, most of my stuff is stored in a walk in closet, so this would rarely see the light of day. It makes more sense to get this into the hands of someone who both wants it and will enjoy it.

Now once I decided to pass it on, the question was a matter of how. I really wanted to keep it as the ultimate trade bait. Shortly after I posted the find, I was inundated with unsolicited offers. Nothing being offered struck my fancy, and I really didn’t want to settle for anything. To complicate matters, you really need to understand my collecting style. Like most when they start out, I went crazy and tried to acquire any and all the systems I could. After a while I started to question this attitude. Here I had multiple copies of the same game spread across multiple systems. I had a favorite which I played, and the rest just sat in the closet. This revelation forced me to reexamine my collecting style. I started to shift my focus towards only collecting games and systems I either had and played growing up, or else wanted. After a number of years I basically collected most of what I wanted. Now I pick up the occasional title or system, but I mostly enjoy the systems I have.

One hard thing I have found with rare items is that it is difficult to place a value on them. When you are trading, the value is less important as long as both sides are happy. If I was to sell it, how much is fair? This question really had no answer. I have gone back and forth with a few collectors and a number of prices have been thrown about. Since these so rarely come up for sale there is no baseline to work off of. In cases like this, I finally came to the conclusion that ebay really is the fairest option for all involved. It will offer maximum exposure for me the seller, and for the buyer they will only pay what the market dictates, not some arbitrarily high price I might otherwise set. I plan to place it on ebay in the next few days with a reserve around the same dollar amount I have already been offered.

Well this long rambling post is my attempt to show what went through my head. When I never expected to be in this position, I speculated what I would do. Now that I am, I finally know. Am I right or wrong? I’m not sure, but I’ve made my decision and I’m happy with it. My only thought now is what will I spend the proceeds on? I’m thinking of finally picking up the Turbo Express I always wanted, taking my wife out to a nice dinner, and then using anything left over on my other hobbies.

I did reach a personal goal by just owning a grail. Now it is someone elses turn.

[Bronty-2]

"I actually paid $2. Any you know what, I was slightly annoyed at that. "

--that part of your post took some nads :p

[qbertandernie]

dont forget to link it here, im sure a lot of folks will want to watch it 'just to see'...let alone those who really want this thing.

[Goblin]

dont forget to link it here, im sure a lot of folks will want to watch it 'just to see'...let alone those who really want this thing.

It is now listed and the link is posted over in the eBay forum.

I must say that writing this auction was actually very difficult. I tried to fit in a variety of terms that might be picked up in searches rather than relying soley on category listing.

In the last 24 hours I received a very (very) tempting final offer. Ultimately I feel confident in my choice, but in a moment of weakness I almost caved. What kept me back was that I plan to use a nice chunk of the profit to buy something for another hobby. Thanks to all who offered advice.

[leonk]

Hey Goblin..

I remember Joe a few years ago offered one of the NES Panesians for any one that will send him an XBOX.

You should have done something similar to the XBOX 360 if all you care about is gaming. ;) (then you can tell everyone how you got the system for 2$!)

Good luck with the auction!

[PentiumMMX]

Nice Find!

I notices when I least expect it, I find cool Gaming-related stuff, Like with my SNES and Sega CD.

I went to a church sale, not expecting to find much (Maybe a few gaming-related toys here and there) but thwn I got there, My "Spidy Sense" was tingeling. I though a dirt-cheap PS2 was in there somewhere. Apon entering, I saw a table with cases on it that lookd like Video Camera Cases. Then a little boy (He was running the sale with some other Boy Scouts and church members) came up and asked:


What are you looking for?

So I said:


I'm looking for video games

and he said:


I think we have some over here...

So I follow him over to the table where I though I saw "Video Cameras", and saw...

Minty fresh SNES! Holy Swiss Cheese, Batman!

I looked at the cases that had the Sega Genesis stuff and noticed one that was bigger then the others. I looked inside and saw...

Minty Fresh Sega CD (with Genesis)! Holy CD-ROM, Batman!

See? When you least expect it, you find cool Gaming-related stuff!