I'm brand new to the forum, but I’ve been a casual NES collector since I was a kid. I have all of my original games with mint original boxes that my parents held onto throughout the years (thankfully), but I wanted to share one of my top unexpected finds from a garage sale which happened to be back in 2009. After college I didn’t find a real job for a while and during that time I went to just about every tag/estate/yard/garage sale imaginable. I made a decent living flipping things like software and record albums that people thought were worthless on eBay and things like that. I was always on the lookout for vintage games but rarely came across any outside of the obligatory 2600 consoles/games and modern stuff. Then I found the strangest thing at an estate sale where “everything must go” on the final day of the sale in a bedroom there were 2 front loading NES consoles with a couple controllers and virtually nothing else in the room, no games! One of the systems had a large sticker on the front lid and I flipped it open and saw a Tengen style cart in there which I assumed was pacman or something but when I removed it, I saw Racermate Challenge II and was so intrigued. Of course I bought the NES and the game for a whopping $2. I remember coming home and immediately looking it up online and found the nesmuseum.com page with pictures of the whole assembly. Now knowing that there was a whole adapter and stationary bike that was part of this thing I headed back to the sale and looked everywhere in the house for it but alas it wasn’t there. My cousin who happens to be a pretty serious collector was stunned by what I found. I know there are rarer games out there in the NES library and others have posted about this game here in the past, but it just goes to show you can find anything at these sales!
Wish I was collecting in 2009. I don't even go to garage sales anymore. "Have any video games?"............Oh we sold those many years ago...........:-)
I'm having a great year with yard sales and classifieds. I don't know what's causing this revival of the good finds, but it seems I'm not the only one. Of course NES and SNES finds are rare, but I made some awesome purchases this year. Last week alone I bout a Kartia and Xenogears for PS1 for something like $20 which includes a working PSX console. There seems to be plenty of DS and GBA that's popping up, too.
That's gotta be the top or near the top of the list for "best NES finds where the game was in the console" my personal best is Kirby's Adventure, welcome to the forums!
I think ever since the the story of the "$13,000 Nintendo" broke (really because of Stadium Events) there are a class of people out there who think their commons are worth tons of money at yard sales. I've seen people trying to get $20-$50 firm per game for common N64 games and other stuff like that. I mean do you seriously think that if you put this in your front yard someone is going to pay top dollar! I know the following link is a story most of you probably know about but it's one of those stories I never forgot and keeps me going back to these types of sales because in reality you NEVER know! https://blog.pricecharting.com/20...
