Your Best Pawn/Thrift Shop Finds

[Natty Bumppo]

Nice. It is very rare that I find LD anywhere. I saw them at a flea market once. And I bought some off of Craigslist one time. beyond that, nothing. sometimes you see em mixed in with vinyl.

ne
They still show up at thrift stores now and then around here. Usually in very small numbers - although two weeks ago about 400 showed up at one - I bought 4 or 5. Nothing terribly rare - although I don't look for things just because they are rare - just things I like and don't have.
I haven't actively gone after lasers for a long time - mostly because I have most of what I want - the ten years or so after lasers phased out were the glory days as people dumped their collections. I think my favorite piece is a Hong Kong laser of "Night of the Comet" - which has since come out on dvd. But it is a pretty neat piece nonetheless.

[Niku-Sama]

oh boy I have found a lot of hard to find things at thrifts.

I'm not sure what the rarest would be, Its either the Vectrex for $5, the stack of Saturn games I got for fairly cheap that I mentioned not long ago in another thread or the 20" PVM I got for $15 about 2 or 3 years ago.

theyre all gaming related, by far not the rarest things I own but probably from a thrift.

[mailman187666]

Thrift store= Shantae on GBC for $1.33

Game store= Chase the Chuckwagon for $5

Flea Market= Swordquest: Waterworld for $15

[Steve W]

I also bought a Vectrex for $5! Okay, it didn't have a controller (I had to order a rewired Genesis controller from John Dondzilla) but it was totally worth it because I had just started thrift store shopping after reading online about how effective it is, but I had never found anything worthwhile to that point. Finding that Vectrex really made me want to really double down on the thrift store shopping, it gave me the confidence that I wasn't wasting my time.

The best flea market find was a Myriad 6-in-1 NES cartridge, loose. It was the only thing I've ever sold online, got $660 for it.

[jb143]

I haven't bought much from pawn shops. A few that I've been to seemed more like a hangout for the regulars and I had a weird feeling of not belonging in there. It was very off putting. Otherwise I've gotten a few games and DVD a few times from pawn shops but nothing to get excited about.

Thrift stores on the other hand, probably about 90% of my collection has come from those. This was back when there were more deals to be be had though.
Off the top of my head, some of my best finds were (with estimated prices)
Sealed GB Tetris ~$4
CIB Lufia and the Fortress of Doom ~$4
Intelligent Qube ~$3
CIB Atari Lynx ~$5
Boxed Sega Master System ~$15

Probably a lot more if I stopped to think about it.

[Steve W]

It just occurred to me that I do have a pretty good pawn shop story. I generally have never found anything in them, but in this one case I did. It was early 1989, and a computer store in Euless, TX was shutting down. So my friend and I went there to pick the bones. On the way, though, we stopped at a pawn shop for the hell of it, and I bought a handful of Intellivision games (I had just gotten my first Intelly a couple months before) including a white labeled cart called Mind Strike. When we got to the store, I ended up buying a second-hand Intellivision ECS Module. Turns out Mind Strike coincidentally would be playable only on the ECS Module, and I wouldn't find another ECS game in the wild for nearly 20 years. Pretty lucky, especially since it quickly became my all-time favorite Intellivision game.

[Tanooki]

My best gaming finds ever were online local marketplace items and this year too. Thrifts and pawns have topped out just with a console bundle for a fairly give away price and sort of not worth mentioning, same with one off games well off the mark too.

I see people have tossed online local/flea market stuff into it so here's 3 each from a different source.
Offerup - FREE modern arcade cocktail cabinet with iCade 60in1 board inside, lacked a screen (bought a 19" 5:4 ratio VGA screen+soundbar for $25) also needed another $10 into a black bezel and keylock.
Facebook Mkt - 2 Slot Neo-Geo all stock cabinet w/9legit games (2 partial kits) + the 161in1 for $500+Dragon Warrior 4 and guidebook (technically free, sold a useless pinball machine off, came out ahead.)
Craigslist - Home Use Only Pin-Bot pinball machine, technically cost me $1500 (realistically 10 NES+SNES games to cover it I didn't ever play.)

Non-gaming, spent $10 at a Goodwill a year ago, ended up buying what ended up being a super rare toy set from Israel from the mid 1960s worth around $1000-2000USD depending on buyers interest.

[Slate]

I think i did pretty good last year.

71 Games - 68 NES, 3 SNES - No Duplicates - A $350 Value (Bought for $20) Highlights include Megaman 2, 3, And 4, Lolo 1, 2, And 3, Uninvited, Maniac Mansion, Adventure Island 3, Ultimate League Soccer, and Tetris 2.*

2 BNEW And Sealed Atari 2600 Games - Night Driver (BNEW & Shrinkwrapped) And Tank Brigade (An R7 - Not Shrinkwrapped, But Still Sealed) Tank brigade cost $2, while Night Driver cost $3.

Bought every one at the same goodwill. Within a month's time of each other.

Reiterating from 13 years ago, there was a copy of Power Blade 2 in there I picked for about 37 cents. Now it's going for over $500. (No, I don't still have it.)

Tank Brigade was probably one of the few copies, if not the last one, still sealed. (I sold that too.)

Other deals I found are:

NES Action Set, New - $40, Local Consignment Shop (does this still count?)
NES Top Loader (Yellowed on back with a piece of plastic missing; Dogbone controller included) - Salvation Army, Jan/Feb 2006, $5 (Incidentally, the 68 NES games posted above included a yellowed copy of Dr. Mario that fit the yellowing on this Top Loader to a T so I figure these two individuals were together for years.)
Virtual Boy with Controller and 1 Game (minus the stand) - $3, Goodwill, 2005/2006.

- Austin

[Niku-Sama]

what is with Dr Mario being stuck in systems for years?

When I got my Sharp NES tv it had Dr Mario in there and it looked as if it had been in there the better part of a decade, there was a dust line that went across the top where the smettal support goes across the cart tray, same one in a standard toaster. it was quite the accumulation of dust too...

I wonder if I have that pic

[Cornelius]

what is with Dr Mario being stuck in systems for years?

When I got my Sharp NES tv it had Dr Mario in there and it looked as if it had been in there the better part of a decade, there was a dust line that went across the top where the smettal support goes across the cart tray, same one in a standard toaster. it was quite the accumulation of dust too...

I wonder if I have that pic

Funny, Dr Mario is in my hooked up NES right now. It is a game that my wife or kids might also play, and play together, for 10-30 minutes when nothing particular is going on.

[Slate]

what is with Dr Mario being stuck in systems for years?

When I got my Sharp NES tv it had Dr Mario in there and it looked as if it had been in there the better part of a decade, there was a dust line that went across the top where the smettal support goes across the cart tray, same one in a standard toaster. it was quite the accumulation of dust too...

I wonder if I have that pic

Well, I found the same pic as I was browsing finds threads; here you go:





https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/s...=1#post2035032

- Austin

[Niku-Sama]

ah yea that's it, when I took it out the contacts in the cart connector had lightly fused with it, felt like in doing a screw or nut that hadn't been turned since it was installed from the factory and gives that light pop feeling when it lets go

[Slate]

ah yea that's it, when I took it out the contacts in the cart connector had lightly fused with it, felt like in doing a screw or nut that hadn't been turned since it was installed from the factory and gives that light pop feeling when it lets go

I'm amused. You didn't have to spray penetrating oil inside, did you?

(Also, to be on topic with 2018, I'd be fortunate to find something at all right now. I might be exaggerating a little.)

- Austin

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

Golden Axe Warrior on Sega Master System, CIB, for $16 on July 12, 2009. The box isn't in the best condition, but it's passable.

[fluid_matrix]

I've never found anything interesting at a pawn shop that was worth posting about.

A quick recommendation though, pics would make this thread much more enjoyable.

[Niku-Sama]

I'm amused. You didn't have to spray penetrating oil inside, did you?

(Also, to be on topic with 2018, I'd be fortunate to find something at all right now. I might be exaggerating a little.)

- Austin

no it wasn't that bad, it just gave a bit more resistance than usual. with it being in the system and down like that for how ever many decades it pretty much ruined that connector though

[gbpxl]

I found AMF Xtreme Bowling at a pawn shop for $5. It's one of the rarest Xbox games and regularly sells for $20+ on Ebay

[todesengel]

Recently found a Colecovision with the full Adam computer expansion module setup for $50 at a Goodwill in Slidell, LA, was surprised to see it since that location never has anything worth buying.