Retro Game Hunt #2 : Video Game Flea Market Finds

It’s been a hectic week, and Christmas is only a few days away, so I haven’t had the chance to update everyone with my pick ups from the last weekend at the local thrift stores. Hell, I haven’t even started Christmas shopping yet. Oh well – games are more important aren’t they? Who needs Christmas – bah humbug.

Let’s start off by saying that this past Sunday was the last day of the Bellmore flea market until the spring. I had dragged my wife and friend Kevin along with me, hoping to get some last minute grabs, but unfortunately most of the vendors that usually sold video games were not around. The only thing I came away with was 3 NES games -

Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt
Bases Loaded
Baseball

(just look at those graphics – who needs MLB the show)

I purchased these for 3 for $5, which isn’t bad and I needed to add the two baseball games to my NES collection anyway. As for the mario, it’s just another double that I’ll end up selling or giving away. I’m just looking forward to next spring so I can buy out the flea market of every retro game they own.

I hit up the local goodwill, and as usual, it was devoid of video games. Look’s like I am going to be stuck just picking up games from shopgoodwill.com. But I’ll continue to check them out, since the goodwill by me don’t participate in those auctions.

Now let’s get to the juicy little morsels I picked up from my new favorite thrift store – UNIQUE THRIFT. For those of you who don’t have UNIQUE stores by you – sucks for you. These stores are amazing, and you can find yourself picking up some pretty unique games.

My first visit at the Westbury UNIQUE, I managed to pick up two genesis controllers and a genesis gun from the misc. electronics rack in the back of the store. I grabbed these for a whopping $3. But my true find came when I was browsing the CD’s as I was waiting to pay. Staring at me straight in the face was THOUSAND ARMS for PS. So I immediately picked it up, for $1.50. Knowing my luck, it’s probably a bootleg, but I didn’t care lol. I’ll take the risk.

(classic PS RPG – can’t get any better than this)

Now my last pit stop to the thirft stores this weekend ended up being a massive collection builder. My wife came with me to the second UNIQUE store in Levittown, and as we sifted through the plasitc baggies near the DVD’s we made a huge discovery. Literally 30+ atari games, just hanging around waiting to be picked up. So of course, I grabbed them all and dumped them on the register, and was greeted with odd stares from the sales clerk. 32 atari games and 3 genesis games (nothing worth mentioning or insanely rare)- for $16.

But, the find of the weekend, is all thanks to my wife. I’m telling you, this woman has eyes like an eagle. She can spot rare video games from a mile away. We did one last minute scout of the WESTBURY Unique as my friend wanted to tag along, but we weren’t finding anything. I mean I just cleaned out the store the other day. But the mrs. comes up to us, holding a little plastic bag containing two black carts. I didn’t know what they were at first, but after closer inspection they had turned out to be Intellivision games. One was golf, meh no big deal. But the second was a huge find -

BODY SLAM SUPER PRO WRESTLING FOR INTELLIVISION!!!

(just look at that shit!)

This is an insanely rare find to come out of a thrift store, and this bad boy is valued at around $50 – $75 for just the cart on EBAY. I bought it for a measely .50 cents.

Grand total spent this past weekend – around $25.

Did I mention I love my wife?