NES pickups April 7th - 17th

This has been a week with more ups and down than the "dash 3" worlds on SMB... visited my local thrift store which shall remain nameless and went from ecstatic that they had some games that I needed, to flabbergasted that they had raised the prices on their games 600%.   I honestly can't remember the last time I paid more than 3.99 for a game at this 'establishment' so imagine my surprise when I visit them and all of a sudden their games are priced at $24.99 each (even the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt cart that came bundled with EVERY freaking Action Set sold).  Either the person in charge of the sticker gun is entirely out to lunch or just plain greedy.  When I questioned the clerk about the recent price hike they tried to play the "they have always been that price" to which I promptly showed them a picture of my purchase there last week for $2.99.   At this point I tried to remind them that most of the items they sell were donated and that charging higher than Pawn Shop prices is ludicrous.  I was disappointed that I couldn't add to my collection at that stop and realized, at that moment, that I would likely have to boycott the store altogether.

Last Sunday I tried to make myself feel better about things by visiting the flea market and found a new seller!!!  Mostly RPG games and some boxed, but a bit more pricey than my cheapass blood could afford.  However, in light of the aforementioned events, I figured I HAD to spend some money here just to show those 'other guys' that it's about principle.  I bought 2 games from the new vendor:  The Last Starfighter (with the Box) and Shenigan the Ruler.

Today capped off the last week and a half on a high note.  A few days back I was scrolling through the local classifieds and then Kijiji ads when I came across a seller in my city that advertised: NES games for sale TOO MANY TO  LIST.   If that didn't sound promising I don't know what did.   I corresponded with the girl who placed the ad a few times and finally setup a time to go and check out the games.  She was a collector herself, but decided to give up on the NES collection to focus on her Gamecube and PS1 collections.  She had a crapload of games and SOOO many titles I didn't have that I was salivating like a Sheepdog on the beach in August.  Yah I know... my poker face sucks!   Anyway she had the games in separate boxes with prices on the flap of each box.   Many of the best games she obviously new the value of from her own collecting days and so quite a few I had to pass up, but she did have a box in the $5-8 range that had several titles that I thumbed through.  Without wanting to waste alot of her time I gathered up 8 titles and asked if she would give me a deal.  In the end she game me 3 games for free.  I told her that I hoped this would be the first of many transactions down the road as there were alot of games she was selling off that have yet to reach my hands.  Just out of curiousity I checked my trusty NES collection APP and was happy to discover that one of the games I picked out was worth the same price as I paid for the whole lot.   This made the 10 day rollercoaster so worth the ride!!!

The standouts from this lot for me are:  Jimmy Conners Tennis (a little less common than most), Tennis because I have a soft spot for the Black Box games and 720 because I used to love that game in the arcade -- "Skate or Die!"  This update brings the collection total to:   389

Until next level...........

NES pickups - April 6th

It was quite fortuitous that I made it to the flea market this morning.  My daughter has been sick with a cold for the last few nights and since she doesn't like to sleep in her own room at the best of times she was bunking with my wife and I last night.  I woke up about 7am to her poor gravelly breathing instead of the usual dissonance of my alarm clock.  Knowing that I couldn't hit the snooze button on her congestion I wiped her nose, tucked her in all warm and cozy and got up.

Arriving early and beating the rush to the flea market this morning I caught my seller before anyone else had picked over his table and came back with 5 new additions to the collection:   Loopz, Dragon Spirit, Hollywood Squares, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Stealth.  Not really any standouts to this lot, and some of the carts have certainly seen better days, but I feel sometimes like these games have become orphaned and it's my responsibility as a lover of that time to welcome them back to an appreciative home.  These new titles bring the total count to 379.   

Today was also made remarkable by the fact that my son (who is on the Autism Spectrum)  is not unlike Liam Neeson in the Taken movies... in that both have a very specific set of skills (I'm paraphrasing of course).  No my son isn't going to break the family away from their captors by snapping people's limbs or pinpointing our location with the use of a pencil and shoelace, but he does possess the ability to take a mental picture of how things are supposed to be and can tell you when one thing is out of place.  For example, the other day my wife knocked a few of her pez dispensers off of the wall where they are displayed and, in a hurry, just put them back without realizing they were no longer in character sections (Gargamel had left the "smurf's village and was now flanked by Bert & Ernie).  Well my son took one look at the wall and stopped dead in his tracks... he proceeded to interrogate Melissa as to why they were not in their correct spots.  Much laughter ensued.   This same gift has rendered my NES collection app useless.   He can take one look at my collection and can tell you which games I have and which I do not.  He even went so far today as to correct a blog post I had made more than a year and a half ago.  I had incorrectly listed a pickup as Megaman 3 when it should have been Megaman 6 and when I questioned the validity of it and he insisted, I cross referenced it with a post I'd made on twitter at about the same time and, sure enough, the boy was right.  Well that was a tangent.  I almost missed my stop.  Bye for now!