So, I know I've seen similar topics before, but I always enjoy seeing stories of how our members have helped each other and have gone above and beyond to really be a part of a great community.  If you have a story to share, please do!  Feel free to share who it was, or if you'd rather keep them anonymous, that's great too.  It can be about a great transaction where they really went overboard, or even a story not about a gaming trade.  Anything positive is helpful and very appreciated.  

It's hard for me to even think of one particular example - there are so many great things I can think of, ranging from over-the-top Secret Santa gifts to heartfelt messages of support, to amazing deals and incredible discounts on items.

One recent example I can think of is dr.robbie.  He won some gaming posters and I made a random comment about missing out on one of them, and he reached out to me offering to give me a good deal.  Not only did he send the one I mentioned (Atlus item), but also several others, and when I made an offer he essentially refused to accept the amount and wanted about half the amount of money.  The items were shipped in a huge box and extremely well protected, and I can't wait to set everything up in my gaming room.  I'm not even fully sure what I paid covered the shipping!   The items are some that I would not be able to find easily anywhere else, so I really feel like he helped me out big time.

I know there are some great stories out there - some maybe we've heard, and some hopefully new.  I look forward to some great examples here so don't let me down!  

 

I sold TheToxicCollector a complete Hyper Fighting for Virtual Boy for the same price the official source sold them for. That game goes for stupid high prices on eBay.

He was very happy to say the least.

When I first got here I was introduced to a member named BigMak rather quickly after searching for some Virtual Boy items. We started working out a deal for him to sell me some of his stuff as he was sort of in the process of getting out of collecting. This came at a great time for me because it made a lot of my hunting and haggling for upper-tier VB items as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Anyways we ended up doing a lot of dealing together, and put a lot of trust in each other to maintain good faith when either working things out with payment arrangements, shipping delicate and expensive items (sometimes even just spontaneously shipping items to me that we'd just worked out the business end of for thousands of dollars and that I had't even paid for yet), and just keeping open and honest communication. It was a real "faith in humanity" experience dealing with BigMak, and the same can be said for many of the other members I've done deals with here. JoneBone, D~Funk, BostonItalian, 1337bcc1991, Gex....I've met some really good people here, and I hope I'm bringing as much to the community here as what I feel they do for my involvement in it.

Anyways that said, the other day my phone rings and it's BigMak out of nowhere. Haven't talked to him in quite some time and we haven't had an active deal in months. He happened to read months ago on another site that I had been looking for a couple of Japanese Virtual Boy demos that are insanely hard to find. We're talking "one copy pops up spanning all online auction sites maybe once a year on a good year, could hold all the copies in the world in your hands at once" sort of thing. I was prepared to drop big bucks if I ever found them, which I didn't anticipate. Bigmak calls me and tells me there's a copy on Yahoo Auctions Japan with a current bid of $9.50 on the rarest VB demo of all, Japanese Mario's Tennis. It's brand new and in flawless shape. I watched it closely thinking there would be snipers camped up on the towers, but nope. With my heart racing I watched as the clock wound down, and I won it for $15. 
Maybe nobody here gives a crap, but to me this is the equivalent of finding a mint sealed copy of Little Samson in a box at a garage sale for $10, and instead of buying it and selling it for a few grand to someone you know know 100% will pay basically whatever you ask them for it (seriously I would have paid an amount I'm embarrassed to even say here for this), just calling your friend down to the garage sale so they can have it for $10. That was a true "friend" thing to do, from somebody who could have easily just made this our next little bit of business that he could've profited handsomely from.

I also want to add that this was from a Japanese auction site that I didn't have a damn clue how to navigate or use. BigMak practically set me up an account on both the bidding site and the proxy service by walking me through every step and answering the 100 questions I had about it all. I can't say enough how much I appreciate these sorts of gestures, and it makes me feel good to pay it forward to the rest of you guys whenever I'm given an opportunity to.

Props for that, Guntz, that's an expensive little item. Funny that both of the first anecdotes are related to Virtual Boy dealings... but honestly that also speaks volumes to me about the camaraderie of the VB community (and PlanetVB forum community) as well. A lot of good people in that small group.

 

I've gotten some additional extras thrown in along with a purchase a number of times. I was so impressed with the kind gesture I begin doing it with my eBay sales.

A few instances come to mind.

I was meeting up with Gloves to purchase an SNES game he was selling. Before we made the deal he sent me a message saying he knows I like Atari and that he had a CIB Dig Dug that I could have for free. I do really like Atari, so that was a nice surprise.

Last secret Santa, I helped Gutsman004 with his gift he was preparing, not expecting anything in return, just happy to help. A few months later we we're talking about our favorite video game franchises, and I mentioned Mario. He happened to have a reproduction of the side art for the Mario Bros arcade cabinet and decided to send it to me for free as thanks for helping him with his SS. Thing is huge, I'll definitely be framing it after we move and I have a dedicated game room  

Back to Atari, CZroe pmd Loxx and I because we were discussing Atari a lot, and he found a hefty lot on Craigslist. In this lot was an Atari 5200 that I would've loved to have, but shipping that beast to Canada wouldn't come cheap. So I had to decline. Until, both CZroe and Loxx decided they'd cover some of the shipping costs to make it easier on me. Not only that but CZroe also went out of his way to ensure the console and controller were in full working order, doing repairs and sourcing parts as necessary. Anybody who knows about the system knows they're very difficult to find in working condition.

Captmorgandrinker always messages me right away when he gets Atari stuff in, knowing I'm after the Activision set. Already got a ton of commons and a few uncommons for really cheap from him.

A while ago Lutherdestroysthegond was having a give away that I happened to win, and received a free copy of magic sword on snes, which I later got a box and manual for from acidjaguar.

Some other people who have gone out to their way to let me know they have something I've casually mentioned wanting: Zombieguygeezus/Regularguygamer, empire, airvillain, Quaze, aj_the_gym_leader, darkclyde28, Foochie776 (I'm probably forgetting someone)

I could probably go on all day. These are just the ones that immediately come to mind. Sorry if I've forgotten anyone  

I've had great experiences with NA members helping to finalizing those "local only" deals. I've been contacted multiple times to pick items up, then ship it to the other NA member. And vice versa, some people selling these collectibles just don't understand shipping/ don't wanna bother with it. So we can fill the gaps and help everyone achieve their collecting goals. To me, this is what what being in a comunity is about.

Mega tank has given me me some good deals on games and gave me a SNES game genie for free!

This is awesome and exactly the type of thing I was looking for!  That's awesome.

 

I do indeed, and it involved a bunch of NA'ers.

Back in January, some fuckers broke into my house. We're pretty sure that our coming home interrupted them, but not before they made off with my Xbone, PS4, some controllers, and a few games and other random things (including a cremains necklace of my father in law).

Scott (pats1717) and I text several times a day (dirty resellers for life!) and I mentioned to him what happened. He quietly rallied the troops (himself, the Nolan Bros, Paul, Fsped09, BA, mattbep, doner24, empire, dquiros, ohnogold, jonny_blades, jonebone, ookii_risu, acidjaguar, K.thrower, VGD, vectrex280996, br81zad, and jjgames) and they surprised me with replacements for the items that were stolen.

What I didn't get a chance to tell them officially was that with the overage they collected I spoke with the funeral director that made the cremains necklaces originally and he was able to make a matching exact replacement!

I already love this place, and being able to pick each other up when shitty things happen to one of us is absolutely incredible.

These are the types of stories that are so encouraging and make me proud to be a part of this community.  And I've seen it time and time again over the years, when people really stand up to help others when they are down.  



 

commander santa is the greatest of all time. his contributions cannot be thanked enough.

bimm lee / guil. you guys are amazing! thank you.
okio she is great too.

sandafloor needs a mention as well. a class act. thank you.

all you wanabes over in the weekly contest. thanks for keeping me around  

arnpoly. *tips hat* thank you sir.

swift forst. involved in tge making of my trophy cart. pride of my collection. also thanks for the nice trades  

mods/admins for putting up w/my shenanigans on a daily basis  

This is why I get a bit irritated when someone throws a tantrum about the community not being what it used to be. Lots of great people here still doing great things for each other.

I have had several members break me deals here and there. I don't want to start listing what I have gotten in these deals or mentioning members because I am sure I would leave someone/thing out, but overall my experiences with NA transactions have been pretty good. I have a few members that have been able to locate some items for me, nothing necessarily too rare, but it helps either way. I prefer to buy/sell here than on eBay any day. If I know an NA member has something on their WTB list and I see the item, I will reach out and at least make them aware I can buy the item for them... of course if I remember exactly who it was. Recently, I had a member reach out and notify me they could get me a Switch. It did not happen as the stock was out, but they reached out anyways and that says something.

I did have a couple of members try to help out with a possible long distance road trip purchase. Unfortunately I had several uncertain obstacles preventing me from sealing the deal on the item, but it was nice to see members pulling together to help one another. I have seen other members help out others acquiring items across the country etc, so I am very confident we still have good people on this board.

People on this board even host events for good causes. I mean come on!  

A member here who rarely sell from their collection, sold me my most wanted gaming item for years. It was a proto cartridge and I am still very appreciative of his generosity.

So many great folks on this site have hooked me up with games, and deals.

The support NESathon gets every year from NintendoAge and it's members is enough to keep the charity marathon running for over six years. There have been a lot of superb sponsors that have contributed to the battle against MS a swell.

I don't have any real big stories but i would like to thank MrMark0673 and his brother for releasing Targa to the public.

Yeah I have a few one being when all the NA peeps and lurkers came along duirng my last sales purge last year that no one was aware of at the time went towards helping me win custody of my youngest son and end a rather lengthy divorce.

Capt'n came along to the resuce around Christmas last year when my sons xbox360 crapped out with a sweet deal on a replacement.

And you'll have to excuse me thst I've forgotten the user name that set me up with a Kirby Anniversary for Wii back some time ago when I missed out on the uber sales which also was a birthday gift for my son. (he still plays it to this day) I may have fogotten the name but I didn't forget the deed.

Oh and Bounce gave me a neat NES USB controller when I was having issues trying to get a proper one to work for AM2R which unfortunately it didn't work for that game due to lack of buttons but worked quite well for other games and emulators.

And there is another user quite some time ago that helped me out when I obtained a DOA Super C cart and he offered a trade with me a working one at no cost aside shipping.

There may be a few others i could have forgotten at this time, but rest assured if I have I'll update this post. There's been a whole lot of awesome deals made over my time here but listing all you chuckleheads would break the servers.

An amazing member, who chooses to remain unnamed, sent me a care package full of SNES games along with 2 other games that had a lot of sentimentality with me

In addition to writing a very touching letter that was included.

...also Mr. Skinny organized a very awesome effort to get a Christmas present for an awesome member. I hope it becomes a tradition

That's awesome. And thanks to everyone who has shared something so far. Obviously we can't acknowledge everyone and every action and that isn't necessarily the goal here, but thank you to all who have gone the extra mile to do something cool for a fellow member.

I like to toss in some freebies with my exchanges. Always appreciate when someone does the same for me.

Thanks to Bert for the shoutout. Ironically, I found something else I was going to message him/you (if you're reading this Bert) about, haha.

DQ hooked me up bigtime a while back. I bought Ultimate NES (Which I now regret, haha) and was too cheap to pay the international shipping. My man DQ was kind enough to have it shipped to his place, and then shipped it to me. I shot him a couple bucks, but not much. He was awesome and really helped out. I made a thread about it.

DeeQueezy is da man!

Also, mega props to everyone else for the rest of the stories. NA IS a radical place!

When I first joined, I mentioned in a thread that I had bought a kickmaster cart online and was disappointed with the condition. Nesmaster sent me a pm that a store near him had one for 15 bucks (it was going for like 50 at that time). He refused to take more money, but finally did agree to taking a few extra bucks to go out to breakfast the morning he picked it up. We became friends and frequently pm about stuff related to collecting, pickups, sales, etc. Though Im way overdue to catch up - hope all is well dude.

There have been many others, but the first one always sticks out in my mind. I quickly had proof of the type of community this is and have tried to help out new members to pay it forward. Never been anything but impressed with this place.

A certain creator of this very thread reached out to me recently.  Without solicitation, he asked if I wanted to buy one of few remaining SNES carts I need at a dirt cheap price.  I was happy to take him up on this offer, and figured I'd just have to pay it forward the next time I could.



...well, the game just arrived, and not only is there a note written to me inside, but the "cart" turned out to be CIB.  He did this, because that's the sort of guy he is.  I don't even want to know what this sort of thing runs for, and I'm not gonna look it up.  Now I think I have at least two "pay it forwards" that need to happen.