Gotcha! - A fluke. Right place, right time personified.

I am certainly in my infancy in terms of the whole collecting thing. And perhaps that's a good thing.    As a kid you are very selective in your choice of games because resources (i.e money) are a finite thing. Christmas and birthdays come but once a year and so gettting the game your best friends are talking about could be a few months away.  With the exception of the titles you get from your Uncle or Aunt (who claim to know you so well).. "gee Uncle George thank you for the Where's Waldo game", you tend to build your collection around the top selling new releases of the day, ports of the arcade classics you pumped quarter after quarter into at your local laundromat, and games that just HAD to be cool by virtue of their title alone: he's not just a man, he's Megaman!

As we get older we invariably afforded ourselves the luxury of sometimes picking up a stinker of a cartridge  because, hey, we were trying to go for quantity now. Sheer numbers along must trump coolness factor, right?  ...

To get back to what I eluded to before, it can be very rewarding to be a novice collector.  Even though I spent countless hours playing these games in the late 80s and early 90s I didn't get into collecting games until the past few years.  As a result, much of the rarer finds are still ahead of me.  I guess I could compare it to reading a good book after someone you know has already finished it.  My wife read such a book recently and then handed it to me when she was done. Not being as voracious a reader as her, I'm taking my time with it and she has asked me a few times what part i am at and "how can [I] stand to put it down".   You see I still have all the best parts ahead of me and she is wishing that she could experience those things again.

Even though I don't have all of the titles out there I have the willingness to try and find them and also the future rushes of finding them to look forward to.
One such ecstatic moment took place in a thrift store that we would visit on about a bi-weekly to monthly basis.  After a few visits I got a pretty good feel as to where they would keep the treasures I was after and so the moment the entry door chimed our arrival to the world I would beeline for the little nes nook.  Unfortunately this visit appeared to be going as most did.  In the little section for computer and video game equipment were the usual suspects.  A few dusty keyboards, a CRT monitor, several pc games on CD that looked like they had been used as coasters and a few copies of Super Mario/Duck hunt.  I kinda sighed and walked out of the section to catch up with my wife.  For the next 20 mins or so we shopped around looking for things that interest her and finally we head back up to the tills.

On the table, right next to the till was a small wicker basket filled with hand held led games, watches with broken straps and a black rectangular case.  If the finish on the case had been less shiny it might not have caught my eye, but I opened it up to discover a black geometrical shape inside the foam keeper that resembled our beloved nes cartridges.  I put it back inside the case, swung the case around and saw the game list printed on the back.  I was holding in my hand the Maxi-15 multi game cartridge. Maxivision 15 was an unlicenced compilation cartridge made by American video Entertainment in 1992.

 To date, this is the rarest find in my collection (as far as I know).  Okay... deep breath.... finding it was only half the battle.  hmm... the proprietor had this relic right up near the cash register.  What is this gonna cost me?

Now my wife will be the first to tell you that I have probably the worst poker face in history.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I can't tell a joke without cracking a smile halfway through, but in my best rendition of a nonchalant, uninterested 30 something I asked the shopkeeper.  "How much are you asking for this movie?".  Whether he believed my ignorance or not he did not correct me but simply stated $2.   I just put it down on the table beside her purchases and let him do his thing.   Not sure if I exhaled until we were back in the car, but my silence told my wife everything she needed to know about what transpired back there.

Now I realize for some this is may be a ho-hum moment, maybe some of you have 2 or 3 of these already, but again for a new-ish collector this was like finding the holy grail.  Think back, if you will, to your first find like this and feel free to leave me a comment about it.