if you live or have lived in the lone star state, post up here.  where are you at?  favorite game stores? etc etc...anything really.  best find in the wild?

then pm me the secret spots where you get all your rare games   



as for myself, i live in the dfw area.  got my first game system (nes) for Christmas 88...been collecting regularly for every system since 1990.  best find was a hot slots for $3.  have found numerous others - dino peak, bubble bobble 2, evo, zombie nation, etc, but hot slots is the best one so far...

Im in texas. Not telling my spots lol.  


Best find in the wild . Cib myriad for free. Samson cart for 5, panic restaurant for 5, bubble bobble 2 for 7. Aerofighters for 25. Evo cib for 20. Zombie nation for 5.

Then an awesme score of 2 dollars each for snes cb's and nes boxes. Just a disguntingly good find i made a thread about a year or two ago.

im in northeast tx (texarkana)

well your in texarkana...that explains the good deals.  you got a lotta back woods hillbilly rednecks  selling them there "nintendo tapes" to upgrade to a ps2 so they can finally start watchin them fancy small dvd records on their tube tv's.
 

From south of Dallas, Waxahachie. I'm not really a collector, just visit my local Game Xchange often to see what they got and occasionally go to Trader's Village to this one guy that always has games. Deals are fair, but you're not getting a steal from him.

Austin here. Don't really find good deals. If it's in a Gamerz, Gamefellas or Game Over.. it's a bit over priced. I haven't really been actively collecting for a long time, way before I moved here. Don't have no secret spots either. Just glance around and if I have a few bucks to throw away, I spend it.

DFW here as well and I just hunt around the area for commons. I have been through Texarkana twice over the last year and I always found good deals. Nothing major but found some mega man games way below eBay prices.

Waxahachie and Waco also had some good stores. If I know I'm going anywhere out of the area I'll look up game stores in the area. Wife is also really into antique selling so scores from that have funded some additons to the collection.

i used to go to traders village for years, but stopped going a while back when a lot of the vendors started marking all their nintendo carts $20 to $30 for commons lol...now they just look them up on ebay or amazon and charge the highest price they find.
 

ive heard austin is a lot like the dfw in regards to more collectors per square mile then the supply of games in the area.

 

I used live in good 'ol Texas, it's where I grew up. Hated it, though. Why? Well, in the summer, it was SUPER hot. In autumn, it was SUPER hot. In spring, it was SUPER hot. In winter, it was SUPER hot. Now I live in an area where the weather isn't stuck in groundhog day   I do have a soft spot for Texas though, as I said it's where I was born and where I grew up, and I've got so many fond memories of Texas, even though we lived in a neighborhood with ATLEAST 3 drug dealer on our side of the road alone.

Houston Texas guy here. I have a few local spots I frequent but the best is Game Bros. in Pasadena TX.

If there are, I never see them. Unfortunately, I don't get out much to really scope out the collector scene out here.

Yeah we have two seasons here, summer and not summer.

As for the drug dealers, you're pretty spot on. Everyone and their mama seems to deal out here, but we are a border traffic state so when you got all that stuff coming through, it's only natural that someone sells it. Even that sweet little old lady next door with the well maintained begonias.

Wonder if there are any collectors here in way south Texas (Rio Grande Valley). I always imagined there could be treasure in that area but I'm sure most people look up everything on their phone now.

I have also been to trader's village and when they wanted to sell me wheel of fortune snes for $10 because it's vintage I stopped going there.

Houston here. I hate most of be gamestores around here especially game over so I tend not to go there except every so often just to check if they are slipping on GBC games.

DFW here. My spot is the chair right in front of my computer and eBay.

Ha ha ha so true I like to collect Turbografx so you are not going to find that in the wild.  Honestly if you are patient and shop around you can find good deals on eBay.

Yeah, I only see TurboGrafx games at conventions. Most of what I'm looking for right now are imports, and the only place in town that sells 'em is Game Over, which usually just has a bunch of RPGs and throwaway commons that people couldn't get sell (mahjong, visual novels, sports games, and so on). I've seen ESPgaluda II there though, so they do get some good stuff in every once in a while.
 

I'm in San Antonio, for about 3 more months at least.

Don't really hit the game stores in the area unless I'm already out in town, but I've cherry picked Game Over out of a lot of choice Sega titles over the years.

Found tons of great stuff at flea markets since I've been here though. $5 RC Pro Am II at Trader's Village, Haunting Ground for a dollar, MM X2 for practically free at a garage sale and most recently a jewel case variant In the Hunt for $5.

Not really though. Texarkana isnt that small. Some of the surrounding areas in arkanasas and texas, yeah their are hicks but I mean thats the same as dallas ft worth. When I lived in arlington. head south 20-30 minutes and it was hillbilly  as well. There is a reason there is a exit on I-35 onto I-30 saying exit for texarkana even though its 3 hours away. Its the largest town in between dallas and little rock.

No idea why texarkana gets this moo moo farm hillbilly reputation. Its really no different than a normal town. when you add the surrounding cities that are basically connected its 70-80k population.
 

i went there a few months ago when bought a supra.  i wanted to got to several spots, but ran out time and had to get the car back home.
 

I think it may have been about 2 years since I actually went out there.  I was determined to find Mike Tyson's Punchout and I wasn't going to pay $25 on ebay so in my desperation I went out there and found 3 copies, all $55 loose.  Found it later that year at Game Xchange in Waxahachie for $6.95.
 

back when gamexchange was good. Absolutely sucks now.

14,000th post!!!!

The store here was great until it got picked through for a year, and then The Game Chasers did a few episodes here and somehow found a Dinosaur Peak. Now I just have to go once or twice a week to look. Usually nothing has changed, but sometimes it will look like someone has traded in 10-20 games (or the owner dropped off a box of stuff) and there will be some good games. The Dreamcast games don't seem to move at all, but most of what they have are sports titles and internet browsers.

Congrats on 14,000.  I may get there in about 15 years lol.

They raised all their prices to ebay. And the register even if you bring up the game with a price will change it if its updated which now tgey all are. No deals there anymore

I'm in the DFW area (Plano, specifically).

Not sure that I have any "favorite" stores in the area. It's tough to make any decent finds around here for anything older than PS2. I mostly just make my rounds at places like Half Price Books.

I'm also not sure that I can claim/remember any great finds worth bragging about.

My first game console was a Colecovision (in '85), followed by an Atari 2600 (in '86). My cousins and neighbor kids got an NES in '88 and I played a few games that way (Super Mario Bros, Legend of Kage, Skate or Die, Adventure Island, etc.) but I didn't get my own NES until April of '90, followed by a Game Boy that summer. I was immediately captivated by Nintendo. I attended NWC that year. I subscribed to Nintendo Power. I watched the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Captain N. Totally hooked. Still am, I suppose.

The SNES was an even bigger treat than the NES for me, I think. I bought myself one for Christmas of '91 and was instantly blown away. I still have some of my original carts for the system.