I too, got myself an Atari 7800+. Picked up "Xenophobe" and "Choplifter" loose from a local retro toy store with some "Chamber [of commerce] Cash". I ordered "Fatal Run" from Atari, which is just a weird game now that I've played it.
At that same toy store on the same day I picked up the above two 7800 games, I also got some magazines. A while ago (I don't remember when), I went through another purge of my magazines. My "Game Players" mags along with my entire "Nintendo Force" collection (the first two years I think followed with a few more issues after) got traded in to said toy store for store credit. Didn't think about it for quite awhile but as time wore on, I got some sellers remorse. I never saw the mags again and I just figured "oh well, my mistake".
On the day I got the 7800 games, the store had bins of old magazines. As I walked by, I saw a familiar issue sticking up out of the stack. It was a "Nintendo Force" issue. I have no idea how many people in my county would have subscribed, so I dove in and found pretty much all the "NF" magazines I traded in. Searching the stack some more, I found all my "Game Players" as well (the cat bite holes in the magazine protector flaps confirmed they were mine). I asked the clerk what the prices were for the mags in the bins.
"Free. Take as much as you want."
I took my old mags and returned them to my collection, never to trade or sell again. Talk about sheer, dumb luck and ranks up there with my two greatest (and cheapest finds) ever (TG-16 in box for 50 cents and a bunch of Sega Saturn and Sega CD stuff, systems and complete games, for probably less than $50 YEARS ago).
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