Pirates!! Or Mutiny on the high sea flea market

It seems like an eternity since I did an entry that wasn't a simple game pickup update.  I was inspired, or maybe fueled is a better word by my experience today at my weekly pilgrimage: The Sunday flea market.

The 'market' opens to the public @ 8am and as is customary each Sunday I arrived at 8am with coffee in tow.  I made a beeline to the table of the dealer who only comes once every 4 or 5 weeks and saw he only had about half the games he normally does.  Perhaps he saw the confusion on my face because he answered a question that hadn't even yet been spoken and said that he sold a box of games that morning.  I dug a little deeper.  This morning?  Did the market open early? No, he replied.  He was unloading his treasures when another dealer came and made an offer on the box.

I'm gonna guess that since he generally sells his games for $3 each that the other guy probably didn't pay more than $2 a game for the lot he bought.  At any rate I managed to find a few boxed and unboxed games that I didn't yet have and he gave me a good deal.  I then carried on and found the box at the other seller's table.  He had not yet priced the games and so i pulled a few aside and asked for a price.  For the 3 games (that I'm quite certain he didn't spend more than $6 on a mere half an hour ago) he was going to charge me $20. Ouch.

I get it, I mean I know he's gotta make a living too, but to buy them before the flea market was even officially open is a little like sniping an auction at the last second.  I would've probably paid $5/game, but twenty for three games that he had got in a somewhat questionable manner was not a fair deal as far as I was concerned and so I left his table empty handed (for the first time in awhile).


At the end of the day I'm happy with the games I did end up buying:

Maybe it's just fate that the other games were already bought before I got there as I may have spent more than I should have otherwise.